The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One (3 page)

              On this morning, however they would finally learn the exact nature of that procedure. On the following day, they would actually undergo it. The team had assembled in a briefing room normally used by the hospital staff. It was arranged like and auditorium, with rows of seats staggered on five, progressively higher tiers.

              The seats closest to the raised speaker’s podium were reserved for the ten volunteers, while the others were filled with forty or so medical staff. There were five chairs behind the podium; presumably for Hicks and some other high-ranking officials.

              McNamara was pacing in front his seated teammates.  “I wish they’d forget about all the preliminary shit, and get on with it; I hate waiting.”

              Carter chuckled at the Canadian’s frustration. “You might as well relax, Sergeant. Whatever they’re going to do to us, it must be as revolutionary as the General claims. They’re not just going to finally tell us what Red Team is about; it looks like they expecting some brass that’s higher up the food chain than General Hicks. The brass like their ceremonies and briefings; it gives them a chance where their medals and get out of their offices.”

              “Thank God I’m a Sergeant,” McNamara snorted.

              “Amen to that,” Garba said, patting her own sergeant’s stripes.

              “Major, you never did tell us how you know the General?” Winters said from her seat at Carter’s left.

              Carter turned slightly to face her. “Not much to tell,” he said. “When I was a kid, I was buddies with the General’s son, David. The general and my father were best friends. When Dad was stationed at Fort Brag, the general’s and his family lived next door to us. Sometimes my dad was deployed and the general wasn’t, and vice-versa, so each looked out for the other’s family when the other was away."

              Carter paused briefly, as though he was deciding rather or not to continue. “When I was twenty-four, my dad was killed in the Amazonian War. David was killed early on in this war. After that, the general and I just sort of adopted each other.”

              “So, you are close, then?” Winters asked.

              “The general is the closest thing to family I have left,” Carter admitted.

              “So he puts you on the list to play lab-rat for the Frankensteins?” Beauchamp asked.

              “He’s a soldier, and so am I” Carter replied; something in his voice saying that that was all the explanation he would offer to Beauchamp.

              An Army Major entered the room and called the military personnel to attention. Hicks came into the room first, moving to stand in behind the podium. He looked at Carter; his eyes showed a combination of pride and regret. It was the same look Hicks had had when Carter and the general’s son, David, had graduated from West Point. There was pride because the young men had done well at the academy; and there was regret because Hicks knew, even then, that another war was coming, and that Carter, David, and the other young people his class would be among the first to fight in it. 

              A few steps behind Hicks were a U.S. Navy Admiral that Carter recognized as Thad Collier: the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Collier was unremarkable in appearance; average in both height and weight. He was not average or unremarkable, though. Eight years ago, when the current war had begun, Collier had been in command of Nationalist American forces during the war’s first battle. He had been in command of the guided missile cruiser
Gettysburg’s
surface action group, and had refused an order from the newly formed
World Central Authority
to bring his ships into a French port and allow his ship and crew to be interned until they could be absorbed into the world government’s forces.

              Collier’s defiance had begun what later came to be called the
Captain’s Rebellion
. Following his example, over a two hundred US Navy ship’s captains, as well as captains from several other of the world’s navies, had refused to submit to the WCA edicts. When the WCA dispatched a force of a formerly French heavy cruiser, two destroyers and three frigates to force Gettysburg’s group into the French port of Brest, Collier’s fleet sank four of the six WCA ships and forced the others to withdraw with heavy damaged. Collier, by most accepted accounts, had fired the first shots in the war that the United States was now fighting: the
Sovereignty War
.

              Carter frowned when he saw the next officer to arrive. Richard Pope was a Colonel in the US Army. He had a soft, almost mushy, face. His eyes were thin and deep-set with thick, bushy eyebrows atop them. He was tall and too slim for his height. His uniform was new and freshly pressed. In Carters opinion, Pope was an incompetent, conniving coward. Carter had experienced all of those qualities in Pope first hand. That experience had cost Carter the lives of at least one friend, almost cost Captain Williams his career, and earned Carter one of his five Purple Hearts.

              “What does Pope have to do with this operation?” Williams asked from his place at Carter’s right.

              “I don’t know,” Carter said. “His kind always manages to float to the top without trying.”

              “Like a turd,” McNamara observed.

              Carter smiled and chuckled. “That’s exactly right; Sergeant, like a turd.”

              Another officer appeared in the doorway. She wore an FNF uniform and walked with cane carved with lion’s head for a handle. Her hair was dark but just beginning to gray and her face was thin and gaunt. It seemed as though she had to exert great effort to walk to her chair.

              “That is General Sasha Khazanov: the commanding General of the FNF,” Captain Price announced. “She was one of the first high ranking officers to flee to America and form the FNF after the European Union’s military was absorbed into the WCA.”

              “It would seem that we have some very important people here to watch us die tomorrow,” Muller said in the sardonic manner that the team had slowly come to realize was his way of being humorous.

              Hicks stepped up to the podium and the room quieted. He looked carefully at Carter, and then each of the team members one at a time. His eyes held a disconcerting gentleness. For a brief interval, Hicks was not a military officer addressing ten people who had volunteered for a dangerous task; he was a father who knew that ten of his children were in danger.

              “Be seated,” Hicks ordered.

              “There are ten volunteers seated before me this morning. They volunteered to participate in a project about which they knew nothing about; except that it involved great personal risk and the possibility of death. Each of them has already done their duty as warriors. Each of them has proven themselves in battle. Today, for the first time, they will be told what exactly it is that they have volunteered for.”

              Hicks paused for a breath and scanned the audience with eyes that had regained a soldier’s hardness. He looked passed the team and panned his eyes over the medical personnel behind them. “Some of you have been with Doctor Atkinson from the beginning; others have only recently come to the project. Very few of you know everything about it. “

              Hicks paused to draw another breath. “Project
Seed Corn
will make these already fine warriors who are with us today even better. They will be able to go further and faster while carrying more. They will shoot straighter, hit harder, and take more punishment than any other soldiers alive. They will become living nightmares for our enemies.”   

              Hicks paused again, keeping his gaze on the medical staff.

              “The members of the project’s medical staff are, in a way, as elite as our volunteers. Each of you, from the doctors to the physical therapists, has been hand-picked. You are responsible for the health and well being of the volunteers. You will help them to develop the full potential of this project.” Hicks paused again; his face took on an intense, determined look.

              “Make no mistake; this project is as important as the Manhattan Project was during World War Two. It has the potential not only to win this war for the United States and its allies, but it may also reshape the way wars are fought.”

              Hicks turned to the lab-coat clad man sitting behind the podium, next to the Admiral. “So that you all may understand what exactly it is our volunteers will be subjecting themselves to; Doctor Atkinson, the project’s scientific director, will outline the nature of the project.”

              Atkinson was shorter than average and a bit heavier than he needed to be. He had short, immaculately groomed brown hair and neatly trimmed moustache. He wore a pair of wire-framed glassed, with oval-shaped lenses that called attention to his bright, discerning eyes. His voice was even; his inflections precisely controlled.

              “The process which volunteers will to undergo involves a radical reengineering of their genetic structure,” Atkinson began without preliminaries.

              “Within the DNA of all human beings is genetic material with a purpose that has been unknown to science. Until now, this material has been called ‘junk’ DNA. In reality, as my research staff and I have discovered, so called junk DNA contains the genetic instructions that make evolution possible. It is in this part of the DNA that the next step, perhaps the next several steps, of human evolution exists. Under normal circumstances, this evolution would take hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years. However, my staff and I have developed a process in which certain individual’s evolution can be accelerated.”

              Atkinson stopped and looked at Carter and his team. “We have found, in certain rare individuals, a dormant DNA sequence that would, were it no longer dormant, produce an array of para-normal abilities that, for lack of a better term, can be called super-human. These abilities, when possessed by people with the extraordinary combination of training and combat experience possessed by our volunteers, will allow them to form a unit with a striking power usually associated with a force that is many times larger in number. We have developed a process to activate that DNA sequence in our volunteers. Further, once our volunteers are fully operational, we have identified many other subjects with the required DNA sequence that can be activated using the same procedure. For ease of reference, this DNA sequence has been referred to simply as the
para-gene
; the people who posses that gene are referred to as
paranormals
.” Atkinson paused then; waiting for a reaction.

              Carter stood. “Doctor, just what kind of enhanced abilities are we talking about?” he asked.

              “Strength, agility, and physical endurance are increased by between six and ten times when compared to the individual’s previous capabilities. Mental capacity is also increased to varying degrees. For instance, a surviving subject’s cognitive functions increase to the point where the subject achieves nearly total memory recall. The subjects become ambidextrous and have greatly increased eye/hand coordination. These abilities seemed to manifest in all subjects whose para-gene has been successfully activated. Also, other more extreme and unusual abilities such as telekinesis, extremely rapid healing, and heightened physical senses have also been recorded. We have not yet been able to predict which subjects will acquire the more unusual abilities.”

              “Unfortunately,” Atkinson said, appearing apprehensive for the first time. “We have, despite our best efforts, experienced a consistent twenty percent mortality rate among subjects undergoing the procedure. Also, even subjects who survive the process undergo a level of pain that is best described as beyond severe. ”

              “Doc, can’t you just put us to sleep until the painful part is over?” McNamara asked.

              “You will be sedated in the initial stages,” Atkinson replied. “However, as the process progresses, your bodies will develop increasing resistance to anesthetics. Eventually the amount of medication needed to keep you unconscious would likely be fatal.”

              “Doctor,” Williams said. “How have you obtained the information you are presenting here? Have there already been human test subjects?”

              Hicks came to stand beside Atkinson. “Initial trials were conducted on ten prisoners of war.” Hicks said.

              There were astonished gasps, horrified glares, and some approving nods among the crowd. Hicks ignored them. “The WCA negated the Geneva Conventions a long time ago. The United States and the FNF have, for the most part, continued to abide by them. However, given what is, quite frankly, a desperate strategic situation; we were forced to advance this project by extraordinary means.” Hicks face hardened. “To put it simple terms; we didn’t have time to dick around giving mice superpowers.”

              Atkinson came forward again. “As the General said, time was of the essence. Of the ten human subjects that were used in the initial trials, five are dead and one is in a vegetative state. Four trial subjects survived the process developed abilities like the one we have been discussing.”

              McNamara stood. “Wait a minute, Doc,” he said. “You said there was a twenty percent fatality rate. From what you just said, the fatality rate is fifty percent; let’s not talk about the guy who wound up brain dead. How did you get from fifty percent to twenty?”